opensource.org — Michael Tiemann, president of the Open Source Initiative (and RedHat's VP of Open Source Affairs), has decided to stand up against the flagrant abuse of the term "open source" (by companies like SugarCRM, CentricCRM, and MuleSource, to shame a few). He is urging everyone to use "open source" only to refer to programs with OSI-approved licenses.
Jun 21, 2007 View in Crawl 4
garys278Jun 22, 2007
shut the hell up, if you can't handle a troll, get off the internet. hell, I agree with 7of7 most of the time.
soulhuntreJun 22, 2007
Playing bulls**t games with the capitalization does not make the mark unique. The simple reality is that the terms "open source" were in common usage long before the OSI and the GPL and make sense with out their approval or butt kissing. The OSI wants to build a brand? Go for it. Give out "OSI Approved" stickers. Give out "Bruce likes it!" stickers or "Stallman Approved!" logos. Whatever... but trying to use common terms in this way is just stupid.
gmorganJun 22, 2007
Who is it that employs the main kernel devs now?Trust me the OSI is given more credence than the FSF these days.
gmorganJun 22, 2007
No that is wrong. The point of freedom is that the author has the right to do whatever they want with their code, they can choose to be OSS or not but that freedom alone does not make it open source. There is an agreed upon definition. These companies are using the term open source to boost their bottom line by playing off the trust people have in open source solutions.
jqp123Jun 22, 2007
Much in the land of "Open Source" is upside down and backwards; often intentionally so. This article offers yet another example. The OSI is trying to introduce some order and attempting to just *assume* control. It may be well intentioned but they're doing all this after the fact and without any legal authority to do so. The cats are already out of the bag so to speak and at this point, the OSI comes off looking like a bunch of fools for attempting to herd them back in.
jqp123Jun 22, 2007
"There is an agreed upon definition." There is? Who agreed to this definition? Where would I find the legal owner of it? Certainly not the OSI.
carzorstelatisJun 22, 2007
They should think what happened to the term 'Web 2.0' after Tim O'Reilly's abusive legal threats. These clowns don't even own 'open source' as a trademark (only their own 'OSI approved' logo) so they might as well just shut up before they embarrass themselves even further.